Contents

Preface

1. Faulkner’s Shadow: Pylon, 1935

A Hanger-on with High Flyers ∙ Homage to Howard Hawks ∙ Back to Bailey’s Woods ∙ Something Is Going to Bust ∙ Defying Death

2. Transcendental Homelessness: Absalom, Absalom!, December 1935–October 1936

Romance during a Mad Yankee Operation ∙ Unhappy at Home ∙ Hollywood on the Mississippi ∙ Counterpull ∙ Faulkner v. Faulkner ∙ Into the Dark House of History and Race ∙ The Power of Love

3. The Dividing Line: October 1936–February 1938

Flannel Unmentionables ∙ Slavery and War the Hollywood Way ∙ Breakup ∙ A Voodoo Version of Absalom, Absalom! ∙ Returns, Revisions, and Reunions

4. Grief: February 1938–January 1939

Family Complications ∙ The Bad Boy of American Fiction ∙ Hollywood on the Mississippi

5. Up from Feudalism: The Hamlet, 1938–1940

Exile and Exhaustion ∙ The Rise of the Redneck ∙ “Flem” ∙ “Eula” ∙ “The Long Summer” ∙ “The Peasants”

6. Was: Go Down, Moses, 1940–1942

Way Down in Egypt Land ∙ “Our Most Distinguished Unread Talent”

7. War: July 1940–June 1942

Visitations, Correspondence, and Exhibitions ∙ The Homefront ∙ Escape from Debtor’s Prison

8. Soldiering On: July 1942–January 1943

“The Prison House of Warner Brothers” ∙ Hollywood Goes to War ∙ Furlough

9. Yoknapatawpha Comes to Hollywood: January–August 1943

The Wax Works ∙ At Home and War

10. Fables of Fascism: To Have and Have Not, August 1943–May 1944

Reigning at Rowan Oak ∙ What Price Hollywood?

11. Hollywoodism: May–December 1944

Fitful Family Man ∙ The Faulkner Mystique

12. Hollywood and Horror, Home and Horses: December 1944–September 1945

Businesswomen, Brothels, and Vampire Lesbians ∙ Home ∙ The Salt Mines ∙ “The Plastic Asshole of the World”

13. “A Golden Book”: The Portable Faulkner, September 1945–April 1946

Native Haunts ∙ Success ∙ TheCompson Appendix”

14. Impasse: June 1946–December 1947

Interruptions ∙ Work in Progress

15. New Audiences: Intruder in the Dust, January 1948–October 1949

Off the Cuff ∙ “An Event in American Literature” ∙ Suppressed Faulkner ∙ Hollywood Comes to Oxford ∙ Pulping Faulkner

16. Coded Autobiography: Knight’s Gambit, November 1948–November 1949

Faulkner the Foreigner ∙ “Tales of Crime, Guilt, and Love”

17. Acclaim and Fame and Love: 1950–1955

“The First Great American Writer” ∙ The Nobel ∙ Else

18. What Mad Pursuit: August 1949–March 1954

Joan ∙ Estelle ∙ Jill and Joan ∙ Joan ∙ The End of the Affair

19. Two Lives/Two Faulkners: 1949–1951

Black against a White Background ∙ Collaborating with the Enemy ∙ Staging History

20. In and Out of Phase: August 1951–January 1953

Hanging Fire ∙ Invitations, Visitations, and Honors ∙ “Another Collapse”

21. Steal Away: January–December 1953

Into the Night ∙ Recovery ∙ Mississippi on the Nile via the Alps

22. Civilization and Its Discontents: December 1953–January 1955

Affairs ∙ You Can’t Go Home Again? ∙ War and Peace ∙ Crossovers

23. Ambassador Faulkner: June 1954–January 1955

“Hemispheric Solidarity” ∙ “The Perfect Virgin” ∙ Home Alone ∙ “The Dream of Perfection”

24. Past and Present: February–August 1955

The Old Hunter and the Artist ∙ Fools Rush In ∙ An Education ∙ “The Empty Mouthsound of Freedom”

25. East and West: August–October 1955

A Star Turn East ∙ A Star Turn West

26. North and South: September 1955–Spring 1957

Murder ∙ A New Confederation ∙ “Go Slow Now” ∙ Gandhi’s Way ∙ “The Far Side of the Moon”

27. Going On: January 1956–May 1957

The Actual and Apocryphal ∙ Mr. Jefferson’s University ∙ A Confession ∙ A Faustian Time of Trial

28. Writer-in-Residence: October 1956–January 1959

The Professor ∙ From Jefferson to the World and Back ∙ Two Towns ∙ Two Faulkners and Two Marriages ∙ “THE Writer-in-Residence” ∙ “Moby Mule” ∙ The Oxford-Charlottesville-Princeton Axis ∙ The Princeton Affair ∙ At the Algonquin ∙ At the Hunt

29. Full Circle: January–November 1959

Faulkner on Stage ∙ Coming Home ∙ Race and Politics and Sex ∙ “An ‘Interview’ with ‘Pappy’ Faulkner”

30. Renascence: 1960–1962

Between Homes ∙ Grandfather Faulkner ∙ Fool about a Horse ∙ President Faulkner ∙ A New Home

31. End of Days: June–July 1962

Before the Fall ∙ The Fall ∙ A Fabled End

Notes

Bibliography

Illustration Credits

Index

Gallery follows page 340.